The City of Lovely Brothers (35 page)

Nick made no effort to pressure his friend to be cheerful.

He did not need to be told why he was sullen. But when Caliban picked at his food at dinner, he did all he could to encourage him to eat.

At night, Caliban would undress and get into bed while Nick wrote what he had seen that day in his diary. He also threw in a few words about Caliban's state of mind.

Then he turned off the gas lamp and crawled in next to him.

Caliban would nuzzle up to him, become all weepy, and beg to be made love to. He was a more passive sexual partner than usual, but responsive, and he admitted that 44there was something romantic about making love over the clacking of the wheels.

On the way, they stopped for two days in Lincoln to visit Calhoun's Jake, who had become a doctor. After two years at the University of Wyoming, he had been accepted to Creighton University Medical School in Omaha, where he had married. He had set up a small practice in Lincoln.

Since Jake's wife, Ann, was expecting their second child and their house served as both their residence and a clinic, Nick and Caliban took a room in a hotel.

"I'm glad we can't stay with 'em," Nick said. "At the hotel we'll be able to sleep together."

"Jake wouldn't mind us sleeping together."

"No, but I bet Ann would, so Jake woulda given us separate rooms if they had 'em. We can look around Lincoln during the day, have supper with 'em in the evening, and hang around chatting till late at night. I bet they make good breakfasts in the hotel restaurant."

Jake had to see patients, so he sent Ann and their son in a taxi to meet Caliban and Nick at the station. Ann did not know how to drive. She recognized them at once: two middle-aged men, one of them very handsome who walked with a limp. Nick was excited from the trip and looked forward to seeing Jake, which he hoped would help Caliban snap out of his depression. He was in a good mood 44and very voluble, while Caliban said almost nothing. It surprised Ann because her husband had bragged about how nice and friendly his uncle was.

First Ann took them to their hotel so they could drop off their bags and change clothes. "Then we'll go home and see Jake," she said. "He's arranged it so he won't have to see patients this afternoon unless there's an emergency. I've made us a nice lunch, but before we eat, I'll feed Little Cal and put him down for his nap."

"That sounds real nice, Ann," Nick said. "I can't wait to taste your cooking. Railway food ain't bad, but it ain't great, either. Thank you. That sounds real nice."

"It does," Caliban said without enthusiasm.

Nick changed clothes quickly, but Caliban was

slower than him to begin with, and he took his time. He was in no hurry to tell Jake about Caleb.

"Can't keep Ann waiting too long," Nick said. "I'll go on down and tell 'er you're on your way."

Ann asked Nick if Caliban was not feeling well or if was just shy. "He's so quiet."

"Cal ain't shy. Something happened that got 'im all upset, something bad. You'll hear about it when he tells Jake."

Jake gave Caliban a big hug. "It's great to see you, Uncle Cal. How are things going? What made you decide 44to leave the ranch and go to the big city? Is ranch life getting to be too hard on your leg?"

"Aren't you going to ask me about the others?"

"Sure I am, but you're the important—" Then Caliban's haggard expression sank in. "Something's the matter. What is it?"

"Caleb killed himself. Shot himself in the head." He started to cry. "Blew his goddamn brains out."

Ann had gone on ahead to the kitchen. She put

Little Cal in his highchair and told him to sit still just minute while she got him an orange from the fruit bowl in the living room. She had only left her husband and their guests a minute ago. Now Jake's face was ashen, and Caliban was crying.

"I knew it had to be something bad, the way your Uncle Cal was acting."

"My Uncle Caleb shot himself," Jake said. "It wasn't an accident. You go see to Little Cal. We'll be all right."

* * * *

Nick enlisted Jake's help to get Caliban through his depression. He did not do it by asking him to intervene or to advise him how to handle it. He did it by getting Jake to 44talk about things that would interest Caliban and draw him into the conversation. Jake understood his purpose. The things Nick asked about were neither particularly cheerful nor important, nothing that Caliban would see as an attempt to distract him and take his mind off Caleb. For instance, he asked how Jake liked being a doctor.

"It's more work than I thought it would be before I started medical school," Jake said, "but it's always interesting. You get to know your patients almost as well as you know your family, and you feel good that you're helping them. I suppose you must have felt the same about the kids in school, Uncle Cal."

"Yes, that was one of the things I liked most about teaching. But they were kids. It couldn't be the same thing to get to know an adult that well."

"The funny thing is that it is. They're sick, and they need you to care for them. That's like a child, isn't it? They put themselves in your hands and have to trust you completely. It's an awesome responsibility, knowing that sometimes you'll let them down."

"What kind of patient do you find most rewarding?"

"In what way, Uncle Cal? Do you mean what

diseases they have or how old they are or their personalities or—"

"I meant the patients themselves. I assume your 44favorite diseases —I mean, to treat— are those that are easiest to cure."

"Yes and no. You're always afraid of what may happen when you take on a dangerous case, but when the patient gets better, the rewards are greater than when you take the cast off a broken arm."

"You deliver babies?" Nick asked.

"Lots. What doctor doesn't? I delivered Little Cal. It was only time I was afraid I would faint while delivering a baby. As to what kind of patients I enjoy most, that's also hard to say. Women and children are more ready to tell you about themselves. Men clam up and won't talk about their problems, so if you get them to open up, you feel you've accomplished something."

Once Caliban started talking with the people he

loved most, Nick and Jake, it did not take long before he started talking about himself, unprompted, which in those circumstances was probably the only way they could have got him to express his feelings.

"If I don't say what's on my mind sometimes," he said, "it isn't because I'm hiding it. It just hurts too much to talk about."

"We know that, honey," Nick said.

"And you don't have to say anything to me. Just touching me is enough. The pressure of your hand lets me 44know you know."

"You see a lot of people die when you're a doctor,"

Jake said. "Some are terrified of death, and some want to die. You see people who want to kill themselves, too. Most of the time you can talk them out of it, but when they really want to, you can't."

"Caleb wouldn't talk to me after I told him I was leaving."

"That means he didn't want you to talk him out of it.

If you're blaming yourself for what happened, you're wrong."

"I do blame myself a little. I know it doesn't make sense, but I can't help it."

"It's a natural reaction. I see it all the time. People feel guilty because they're alive and someone they love is dead. It's as if their minds are looking for a reason to feel guilty. But life goes on. Not as if the person who dies never was, quite the opposite. He was, and his not being there anymore changes everything. What Caleb did will have more repercussions than your sorrow and Amanda's loneliness, Uncle Cal. Wait and see if I'm wrong."

"What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking about the ranch, and how with you and Caleb gone, all that's left are two brothers who hate each other." "Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

"No, it's supposed to give you something to think about besides yourself."

From Lincoln, Caliban and Nick rode the Rock

Island Line to Davenport. Seeing Jake again had

diminished Caliban's depression somewhat. When they were back on the train, he began to sink into it again.

"You gotta snap out of it," Nick pressed. "We're going where we're going to make a new life for ourselves.

How you gonna do that if you don't put your old life behind you?"

"I began a new life when you came to live with me.

As long as I have you with me, any change, even if we went halfway around the world to China, would be a little change. But you're right, Nick. I have to put Caleb's death behind me and go on living, living with you. I want to, but it won't let me. Maybe I'll be able to once we've made what you called a new life."

It did not even take that long. Exploring, finding jobs and a place to live, and adjusting to big city life kept them too busy for Caliban to dwell on the past, though he continued to experience bouts of gloominess for several weeks to come. But just arriving in Davenport was enough of a distraction. They had stayed on the train when it passed through one or two big cities on its way across the empty 45plains. Stepping off the train into the bustle of the rapidly growing town staggered them. Its size alone was almost more than they could cope with, and Chicago was supposed to be many times bigger!

In 1923, Billings, the closest large city to

Caladelphia and a place Caliban had been to several times, had a population of about fifteen thousand. The population of Davenport was more than four times as great, and there were three other fairly large cities closer to it than any two towns west of the Mississippi and east of the Sierra Nevada except for Dallas-Fort Worth. It was going through a building boom and boasted a skyline with buildings several stories high. The Kahl Building was over one hundred forty-five feet. The city had department stores like J.C.

Penney and Montgomery Ward. The mighty Mississippi flowed next to it, more than half a mile wide.

The first and most important business was to find a place to live. They felt rich, and took a room at the seven-story downtown Blackhawk Hotel. They asked for a room on the first floor because of Caliban's leg. The hotel clerk smiled and told them there was an elevator. They had never seen one, and he had to show them what an elevator was and how it worked. Immediately, they asked for a room on the top floor so they could look out the window over the city. They had never been so high off the ground. They could see for miles around. "Can you guess what I wanna do first?" Nick asked.

"Have sex right here in front of the window, where we can see all the people and they can't see us."

"You a mind reader or something?"

"I just guessed what I wanted to do, thinking that if you had something else in mind we could do both."

"Now I know you're better! Anyways, you guessed right, so I s'pose we'll hafta do it twice."

"Or for twice as long. But we mustn't forget the bed.

Have you ever slept in anything so big and inviting? Did you feel the sheets? They're linen, but about as soft as the skivvies I got us for your birthday."

"You wearing 'em now?"

"Hey! What are doing with my pants? Did you mean right now? Come on, let's look out the window and try to see where we'd want to live."

They had realized before they had to leave

Caladelphia that Caliban would not have been able to go on living in their little shack on the open range much longer.

Taking care of a house and the grounds around it would be too much for him; they would do better to rent an apartment with a superintendent who kept the building clean and in good repair. Caliban sensibly suggested they 45should begin by getting to know the city a little better in order to choose a suitable neighborhood. They would have liked to live near the river, but decided to find an apartment as close to downtown as possible so Caliban could use public transportation. There was also the possibility that the Mississippi, like the Yellowstone, would overflow its banks in spring.

Exploring the city, they discovered that the people who lived there talked differently, dressed differently, even moved differently from the people back home. For one, they wore shoes instead of boots. Caliban thought they might have to buy new clothes before they could find a decent job. "Then you really are thinking o' working too?"

Nick asked.

"Why not? I ought to be able to find something here that will be easy on my hip. That hotel clerk, for example."

"He stands up all day."

"Well, I bet there are also jobs where you get to sit all day. But all that can wait until we find somewhere to live."

They went to a rental agency and said they wanted an apartment in a building with an elevator. The agent answered curtly that apartment buildings did not have elevators, and they should rent a room at the Blackhawk if they wanted to have fun riding up and down all day. "My friend can't climb alot o' stairs," Nick said in a voice he hoped sounded like a slap in the face.

"I'm lame," Caliban explained.

"Do you want your own toilet, or are you willing to use the one in the hall with the other people on your floor?"

"We want our own," Nick said, "and a bathtub, too."

"You're asking for a lot, aren't you?"

Nick found them a one-bedroom rental himself by

walking door to door and reading the signs in shop windows. It was over a mile from the center of town, but it was on a trolley line and their apartment was on the first floor. It had a dumbwaiter for bringing up coal for the stove and blocks of ice and for sending their trash can down to the commons in the basement. Caliban would use it for two years instead of carrying the groceries up the stairs when he went shopping. The apartment was bigger than what they had lived in at the ranch, and it had electric lights, but the moment they stepped out the door into the hallway, they were no longer in a place they could call their own. At least their bedroom window looked onto a wide unpaved alleyway between their building and the one in back of it where some of the renters planted little kitchen gardens.

They bought new furniture and had a van deliver it.